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Middle East

Israel Takes Down Two Major Enemies

Israel has eliminated two of its most formidable enemies in virtually one fell swoop. On July 30, Israel announced that Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, had been killed in Beirut in retaliation for a drone strike he ordered that caused the deaths of 12 Druse children and young adults in the Golan Heights […]

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Middle East

Erdogan’s Inflammatory Rhetoric

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a discredit to Turkey and a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Unable to restrain himself, he regularly descends into rants unworthy of his office. And being an Islamist and an ardent champion of the Palestinian cause, he reserves his most outrageous vitriol for his nemesis, Israel. Erdogan has been […]

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Middle East

Benjamin Netanyahu Mends Fences With Donald Trump

It looks like Benjamin Netanyahu has repaired his frayed relationship with Donald Trump. Trump, the former U.S. president and now the Republican Party candidate in the forthcoming presidential election, warmly welcomed Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, to his palatial Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on July 26. They arrived in Florida at the end of […]

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Middle East

Kamala Harris Adopts A Critical View Of Israel

Judging by her 40-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on July 25 and her previous comments about the Israel-Hamas war, U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, seems to have adopted a more balanced and critical view of Israel than Joe Biden, the outgoing president. A few hours after […]

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Middle East

Mr. Netanyahu Goes To Washington

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, set a record when he spoke to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on July 24. In delivering his fourth speech to Congress in 28 years, he surpassed Sir Winston Churchill, who delivered three speeches on Capitol Hill. Netanyahu, who has been in office even […]

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Middle East

Iran Is Moving Closer To Nuclear Capability

Iran, Israel’s regional rival and arch enemy, is moving closer to joining the nuclear club, a prospect that would unsettle and destabilize the Middle East. Two months ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has enriched enough weapons-grade uranium to make at least several nuclear bombs in just a matter of days and […]

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Middle East

Israel Needs A New Approach To Palestinian Statehood

The timing was not accidental. On July 18, a day before the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a sharp but non-binding advisory opinion stating that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was illegal and should be terminated as soon as possible, the Knesset passed a motion, supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]

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Middle East

Houthi Drone Strike Plunges Israel Into A Three-Front War

It is now official. Israel is fighting a three-front war. On July 20, several hours after a Houthi armed drone evaded Israeli defences and struck a high-rise apartment building in the center of Tel Aviv, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding eight others, Israel retaliated. The Israeli Air Force, in one of its longest operations, […]

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Jewish Affairs

Canada’s Epidemic Of Antisemitism

The toxic effects of the Hamas’ October 7 massacre in Israel have spilled over into Canada in the form of a sharp intensification of antisemitic incidents. As Deborah Lyons, Canada’s former ambassador to Israel and now its special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, said recently, “It’s clear from the data we’re seeing, […]

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Film

Storm Warning

Stuart Heisler’s taut drama, Storm Warning, is a rarity, one of the relatively few mainstream Hollywood films that have been critical of the Ku Klux Klan, a notorious racist organization that gained immense popularity, even respectability, in the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. Recently screened on the Turner Classic Movies […]